The Cost of Stability in Brave New World David Grayson once said that "Commandment Number One of any truly civilized society is this: Let people be different". Difference, or individuality, however, may not be possible under a dictatorial government. Aldous Huxley’s satirical novel Brave New World shows that a government-controlled society often places restraints upon its citizens, which results in a loss of social and mental freedom. The conditioning of the citizens, the categorical division of society, and the censorship of art and religion carry out these methods of limiting human behavior.Conditioning the citizens to like what they have and reject what they do not have is an authoritative government’s ideal way of maximizing efficiency. The citizens will consume what they are told to, there will be no brawls or disagreements, and the state will retain high profits from its earnings. People can be conditioned chemically and physically prior to birth, and psychologically afterwards.Brave New World takes place in the future, where biological engineering reaches new heights. Babies are no longer born viviparously; they are now decanted in bottles passed through a 2136 metre assembly line. Pre-natal conditioning of embryos is an effective way of limiting human behavior. Chemical additives can be used to control the population not only in Huxley’s future society, but also in the real world today. This method of control can easily be exercised within a government-controlled society to limit population growth and to control the flaws in future citizens. In the new world, since there is no need to make every female fertile, only "as many as thirty per cent of the female embryos … develop normally. The others get a dose of male sex hormone … Result: they are decanted as freemartins…" (Huxley 10). Freemartins are sterile females who sometimes grow beards. Conditioning is Huxley’s message to the wo...
